Posted on 10/18/2013 5:21:46 AM PDT by bryan999
A Pennsylvania woman set out with a video camera to learn what college students in her state know about the Holocaust and discovered an incredible lack of knowledge not only of the genocide of the Jews, but of basic facts about U.S. history and World War II.
Rhonda Fink-Whitman visited college campuses in Pennsylvania this fall, including the venerated Ivy League institution the University of Pennsylvania, where she was repeatedly faced with a remarkable ignorance about events that took place in the last century.
Students didnt know where Normandy was, why U.S. forces landed there, why the U.S. even entered the war or who was president at the time. (Wilson, Eisenhower and JFK were among the guesses.) One student didnt know who Anne Frank was, because he said he never read the book.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Uh, Im on the spot now.
It was a, uh, I dont know how to say it like. It was something that happened in. Oh my God, I know the answer but I dont know how to explain it.
I have no idea.
I have no idea
is it Europe? I dont think so.
She also asked which country Adolf Hitler was the leader of:
Amsterdam?
I forget.
Frightening. Those ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. Our supposedly best-and-brightest are ignorant, but think they know everything!
My history teacher liked to ask if anyone knew when the War of 1812 was fought or who was buried in Grant’s Tomb. There would always be a few scratching their heads.
"The African-Americans. By the mostly white people who set them aside."
But of course. This was the GOAL of the left from the git-go. MAKE EM STUPID. MAKE EM DEPENDENT ON GOVERNMENT. Then they are surfs. Simple as that. They did it. They won. They have made most of the generations since the 1970s to now that stupid, that dependent, thus Dimocrat voters.
I had seen that series - The World at War, narrated by Laurence Olivier - in the 70s and recently purchased it from Amazon on Blu-Ray. It's fantastic! At the time it was made some of the principals were still alive - Albert Speer for example - and are interviewed. I highly recommend it.
Although one answer in another situation was humorous: when touring a cathedral, a student saw a crucifix and asked her friend “Who did that to Him?” The friend replied, “The Communists.”
I’m pretty tired of hearing that. It depends on where you live and the quality of the district. I happen to live in an excellent school district in a conservative town. My kids thrived; I have one currently living and studying in Europe after getting a post-graduate scholarship, and another getting ready to earn a Mechanical Engineering degree from one of the best Engineering schools in the country. Blanket statements like yours are overly simplistic and just wrong.
I told a 25 y/o coworker (Purdue Engineering graduate)that Margaret Thatcher died and he said “Who’s that?” I asked if he was kidding and he said he’d never heard of her. The next day he came back and said, “I looked her up. She was the Prime Minister of Britain, so what’s the big deal?”.
Another young engineer overheard us and came up to me and said, “I know who Margaret Thatcher is.” I said, “Yeah, that’s like not knowing who Lech Walesa is!” He said “Who’s that?”
A recent UC Santa Cruz graduate had never even heard of Dick Cheney. He gave me a blank look.
They don’t teach civics anymore. Kids have no idea how govt is even supposed to work.
Face Palm!!
Women couldn’t vote. Or own property. I think its a stretch to say they had NO rights, but they sure didn’t have many.
I can be a teevee basher at times,but it’s really sad that me and the kids learned far more about history from the tube than we ever did at public school.
The boy is kind of a history buff. He’ll probably wind up being ahistory teacher.
We watch the history & military channel a lot and I nag them to read so they won’t be ignorant.
Teevee can really suck if not done right and it’s kind of scary knowing that without it,some kids would have absolutely no idea about these critial historical events.
Quite a bit depends on what you are willing to accept for answers. The War ran from 1812-1814, but the Battle of New Orleans was in 1815. And Most people don't know that both Grant and his wife are both buried there.
The reason History is taught is that past mistakes aren’t repeated. The last couple of generations are going to try to put many of us in “re-training” camps, and then wonder why we’re shooting them dead.
They don't know Hitler was a Socialist.
They are not taught the Revolution or the Founding fathers fighting for liberty
The ARE taught the Founding Fathers owned slaves and wrote slavery into the Constitution.
We need to reclaim the Republican Party, and the Schools.
“World at War”
It is one of the best WWII documentaries ever made.
College kids should watch it if they have time.
"But then an even greater force emerged, the un"
"....And the un un-nazied the world...Forever!"
For a dramatized portrayal of the War, I highly recommend “War and Remembrance.”
Parents who send their children to government schools are diminishing their knowledge of the world
but but but they are more worldly: they know the maximum sensitivity condom available, where and how to find cheap or inexpensive birth control pills, believe fag sex is OK, speak of affirmative action as a good thing, believe Marxism is either a great economic system or developed by the Marx brothers, and know there is no God because they cannot see him.
Ping to this incredible video. I thought it might be ho-hum; but it turned out to be very impactful about the need to let another generation know how easy it is for genocide to happen.
Sadly the only thing they’ll hear about WWII in schools, was the fact we dropped the atom bomb on Japan, and interned Japanese.
This shocks me, but doesn’t surprise me.
I was a gigantic history geek in school. I read history on my own time for fun. I found it endlessly fascinating. I still do.
Maybe it’s that the spread of ignorance is so thorough and happened so quickly.
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